


Not The First Time

by ELG



Series: Not The First Time [2]
Category: The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: M/M, Rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-19
Updated: 2013-03-19
Packaged: 2017-12-05 20:42:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/727720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ELG/pseuds/ELG
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vin has done this plenty of times before - so why does it feel so different, being with Chris? <br/>(Mention of previous m/m rape)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not The First Time

Chris is a little frightening like this. Not because he’s naked – they both are, alone together in candle-flickered darkness, the night so hot the breeze rasps like a tongue across sweat-prickled flesh – none of that is unexpected; but because he’s revealing too much of himself along with all that skin. Vin is pretty sure the sex won’t be something they need to talk about. No need for excuses when they both know how long they’ve been alone and not getting any from anyone but whores – and not even those in Vin’s case. Some part of visiting a brothel has always seemed not to sit well with remembering he’s a Tanner, so he’s sidestepped it, and wanted men have to take their pleasure when they can find it. So do grieving widowers who dislike words almost as much as they dislike too much intimacy. 

Vin imagined this could all be accomplished without words or caresses. A certain briskness was what he had in mind; he would offer up what Chris wanted in exchange for someone else’s callused hand bringing him to completion; the usual deal he makes on these occasions, always without the need for words. When it was done they wouldn’t need to speak of it, although he was pretty sure Chris wouldn’t roll over and start snoring, more likely he’d fetch them both the whiskey bottle, which they would share without the need for wiping. He saw their friendship running down the same track, clear and straight as a new railroad, and this just something else, separate from it, a useful convergence of needs between two men who knew each other well enough to know when the other was horny. But he hadn’t expected kissing. 

It’s a shock – Chris’s mouth on his, the urgency even more so; a hand in his hair, the stroke of a thumb along the line of his cheekbone, eyes gazing into his with such intensity, and that mouth on his, hungry and tender at once. Chris’s stubble is a rasp against his own and Vin realizes he’s never been kissed by a man before, never felt stubble against his jaw. This isn’t how it’s done, not with a man when the dust of the range is still drying on sweat-darkened skin at the end of a long, hard day in the saddle. It’s done almost silently, hard and fast in the darkness, usually in a stall with an elbow out to keep the horse off, braced between two kinds of wood, without kissing – always without kissing – or any touching except for the necessary to get both parties hard and wanting and in the right position. Sex is the sharp pain fading to a pleasurable friction, rapid grunting and a pleasurable jolt ending with a wet trickle down the thighs; a wince as a man climbs into the saddle the next day; not even always enjoyable, but necessary as breathing, an itch that has to be scratched before too many months have passed. That’s what he consented to when he came here tonight, not in words, certainly, but in the looks they exchanged in the saloon that got hotter and more intimate as the evening progressed and they made their way deeper into the whiskey bottle and every one else in the room receded to the realm of the unimportant. The evening was leaning in close enough to smell the whiskey on Chris’s breath and to realize for the first time that his eyes were greener than a clear sea with the sun on it; to think about how it would feel if they touched, and not disguise the thought, and read it reflected back to him with more humor and more hunger.

So, here they are, naked, as expected, in Chris’s bedroom, as expected, well away from prying eyes, and everything is as it should be – except Chris is kissing him like he can’t get enough of the taste of Vin Tanner, mouth hard and warm and practiced, tongue inside Vin’s mouth now, thumb caressing Vin’s jaw, like he wants to do this forever, the gazing and the touching and the kissing. Vin almost pushes him off and asks him what the hell he’s thinking? He ain’t a girl and he don’t need courting like one. Except…it hasn’t escaped his notice that he’s kissing Chris back, and that when Chris shoves him against the wall with a sound like a sob of need, and strokes his tangle of hair back from his face like it’s as fragile as a flower stem, and then begins to lave Vin’s left ear with a warm wet tongue, Vin’s knees are going weak and he’s not keeping silent. In fact, listening, he realizes one of them is mewing like a hungry kitten and it ain’t Chris.

But this ain’t right. This could ruin everything. Chris is the best friend he’s ever known and, whatever his reputation may be, he’s never offered Vin so much as an angry word, but he’s not the type of man to whisper sweet nothings and he’s getting dangerously close. He’s running his hand down Vin’s chest, touching his skin, then kissing down his throat like it’s not just something he needs but something he needs from _Vin_. And Vin’s whimpering, not because a man with more skill than he’s known before is touching him just right, but because it’s Chris. And that won’t do. It can’t be about the two of them discovering each other like lost cities in the jungle, like bags of gold at the bottom of a well; it has to be about the need and the hunger and the sweat and the pain and the place a man can sometimes only get to with someone else to help him on the way. The destination is supposed to be the reason for the journey – not the traveling companion. They’re breaking all kinds of rules here, and, in the morning, Vin is afraid that Chris – the man who guards his privacy with a razor blade – is going to want nothing more to do with anyone who has seen him like this.

He holds Chris off a moment, elbows locked, palms braced against his chest, though his fingers traitorously want to caress the smooth warmth of his skin. “I don’t need all this….” The words sounded fine in his head, but they’re different with Chris looking right at him, fingers teasing a tangle out of Vin’s hair so gently. “Hell, just let me turn around and we can get right to it….” It was meant to be brisk and businesslike, but it just sounds crass. He’s already flinching in anticipation of seeing hurt in Chris’s eyes and realizes, unexpectedly, that he can’t bear the prospect. But Chris just keeps looking at him and through him and into him so deeply it’s like a blade grazing his soul, painful to be known like this. He’s still scared, he realizes, even though he ain’t afraid of dying, and has faced armed men and drunk men in a locked room to which he doesn’t have the key and angry bears and a noose swinging just the right height to break his neck; but now he’s scared and he’s not even sure why. That must be why he keeps talking even though Chris is just waiting him out, tender and watchful and knowing him so well all these words are unnecessary.

“You ain’t the first.” Vin almost throws it at him like a challenge, daring Chris to make him something he isn’t, to paint him with some rosy glow. 

Chris’s grin is unexpectedly white in the darkness. “Hell, Vin, you mean you weren’t saving yourself for me? Cause you know it ain’t like I’ve ever laid down with anyone else.”

“I’m just sayin’…” They both know he ain’t really saying anything, he’s just talking to fill the silence because he’s scared of what other words might start coming out of his mouth if he doesn’t. He already made those kitten mewing sounds, for all he knows they could be the least of it. The truth is that Chris is the first – not to fuck him up against a wall, but to kiss him on the mouth, look at him as if he’s something he needs and wants and…loves. There ain’t no one ever looked at him like that in his entire life and it’s terrifying him; especially the part about needing it and feeling warmed inside by it. That won’t ever do. He can’t start needing Chris like breathing when Chris is going to be moving onto a woman any time now. Chris doesn’t have a price on his head and there’s nothing stopping him from setting up home with Mary Travis or someone just like her. And the only thing that’s meant to be stopping Vin from doing the same is his being a wanted man. It can’t be because he’s fallen for a gunslinger. This has nothing to do with falling, this has to do with comfort and need and…

Chris is kissing him again, that stubble a rasp like a match being struck, rough against his skin, tasting of tobacco and whiskey and spit, and he’s opening his mouth wider to let that tongue in deeper, like he likes the taste of it, like he can’t ever get enough of it. And somewhere he must have stopped holding Chris off because Chris is pressed against him like their hearts want to be touching, like they want to listen to each other’s beat.

“I know this is just fer one night…” Vin says breathlessly.

And there’s the look in Chris’s eyes he was so afraid of putting there – all that sadness. “Is it?” Chris says.

“I was thinking you wouldn’t be wantin’…” Vin thinks it’s probably well past time he shut up now. Chris’s fingers slipping down his body, like the world’s most skilful piano player, seem to agree with him. Vin rolls his eyes. “Oh just kiss me, will ya?”

That slow smile from Chris, and the burn in his eyes that makes Vin feel as if every cell in his body is aflame. “Thought I was.”

Another kiss and, damn, it’s too much, Chris’s mouth on his mouth, Chris’s tongue wrapping itself around his, those fingers – oh hell, if those fingers keep doin’ that, Vin is going to be singing like a Baptist choir.

They land on the bed, Chris’s body trying not to impact too hard on his an unexpected courtesy, and Vin tries to remember the last time he had sex lying down, the last time he had sex on a bed, and he can’t remember. He’s done it by the light of a campfire and in the sweaty darkness of a teepee, and done it up against all kinds of stable walls… It’s a shock to realize that this is another first: naked, on a bed, lying down, and with kissing. Too many firsts – the scariest of all being that this is the first time he’s done it with someone he loves.

He gasps at the realization and Chris props himself up on an elbow, gazing down at him in concern. “You okay?”

Vin gazes up at him, at the green eyes alight with tenderness for him in that absurdly handsome face, Chris’s finger stroking his tangled curls back from his face like Chris don’t even know he’s doing it before dropping another feather-light kiss on his mouth, like stroking Vin’s hair and kissing his mouth is just something that comes as natural to Chris Larabee, gunfighter, as breathing. 

“It’s too much…” Vin manages thickly, his throat feeling like someone pegged it out in the desert in the noonday sun.

Chris blinks. “I was thinking we could just rub up a little. Hell, I’m fine with kissing….”

Vin waves a hand to stop him talking, because there are so many things wrong with that statement he don’t know where to start. “This ain’t how it’s meant to be!”

Chris looks worried. “What’s wrong?”

He tries to find the words to explain that he can’t deal with it mattering as much as this. A quick fuck up against a stall partition, that’s not hard to walk away from – except in the physical sense if the cowboy fucking him has gotten a little carried away – there’s nothing there to make him remember it with tenderness, nothing there to fill him with regrets. Lying in a bed with someone he loves, someone he knows respects him and wants to keep him safe just as much as he respects him and wants to keep him safe, kissing, touching, all this affection between them, that isn’t something he’s ever known and he doesn’t think walking away from it is going to be any too easy.

“Can’t we just fuck?” he demands, a little desperately. 

Chris looks bewildered. “Kinda thought we were.”

If they just get to it, he’ll back on familiar ground, the pain, the jolting, the pleasurable burn, the wet come cooling as they don’t make eye contact until Chris reaches for the whiskey bottle and they never talk about it again. Vin twists over onto his front. “Just do it….”

He’s aware that Chris is a little taken aback here, that this isn’t quite what he had in mind, but, heck, there are two of them in this bed, and Vin reckons his views count as much as anyone’s and this is how he wants it. “Unless you don’t want to…?” he flashes over his shoulder, angry now.

“Hell, yes, I want to.” 

The bedsprings creak something awful as Chris gets in position, reaching across Vin for something, and then, unexpectedly, bending low to kiss the back of his neck. Vin thinks about slapping him off him like a gnat, but the warm mouth against his neck – and now kissing a line down his spine – makes him whimper internally because it feels so damned good. Chris strokes his fingers up through Vin’s hair before nuzzling down his spine some more and Vin grits his teeth, trying not to give into all this touching.

“What’s wrong…?” Chris breathes gently in his ear.

“I feel like one of Buck’s ladyfriends,” Vin retorts. “I thought I told you, I don’t need courting.”

Chris’s fingers slip between his legs to feel his half-hard erection. “You ain’t ready yet.”

Vin reaches back, and gets a good warm handful of aroused Chris Larabee. “You are.” He wants to stroke it gently, like a new pet, but reluctantly removes his hand to brace himself against the bed, lifting himself up a little and opening his legs. 

Chris says, half amused, half exasperated: “How about we let me do it my way and you just yell out if something happens you don’t like? Okay?”

Vin rolls his eyes. “Fine. Do it your way then. As long as it don’t take all night.”

“You got someplace you’re meant to be?” Chris sounds nothing other than amused now.

“No.”

“You’re not hooking up with Josiah later or something?”

“No. And that ain’t funny.”

“Well, then, as I’m not either, that kind of sounds to me as if we have all night and can take all the time we need.”

Then Chris is dropping those maddening kisses all down his spine that make him want to whimper with pleasure while those skilful fingers keep stroking him so gently. He can feel Chris’s breath on his back, lips tenderly tracing his scars, hands stroking his ribs, his flanks. Chris is lying half next to him, half on top of him, their hipbones grating a little, both of them too bony, but the heat of their skin incredible, like brandy in his veins. Vin makes the mistake of turning his head and there is Chris, haloed by starlight, gazing at him with all that…love in his eyes.

He turns his head away fast because he has so many things he needs not to think about when he has sex. It’s become fewer and farther between for him these days because it’s inevitable when a man’s out on the trail by himself, and gets an itch he needs to scratch, that he has to take a chance, and sometimes the chance pays off and sometimes it just really…don’t. The bad memories can pile up a little, like dust under a rug. Vin remembers that night when he was fifteen and thought himself all growed up and able to deal with anything and that fat, fifty year old guy, Scag Travers, he’d been riding along with nice and friendly for three weeks – even if Travers did smell like a dead hog in the noonday sun – got himself fired up on rotgut and turned into someone else completely, beating Vin down before fucking him in the dying light of their campfire while all those vile words spilled out his mouth. Oh, Travers had cried plenty in the morning, and told Vin he’d never meant to do any of it and he was taking the pledge right now so he’d never do anything like that again, and Vin had walked away without another word and left him there, hadn’t even plugged him full of lead like he’d been thinking about doing the whole time it was happening. He’d left Travers sniveling and rocking in the dirt – his limp prick nothing to look at in the dingy daylight, a shriveled dangle of flesh that hardly seemed worth bothering with, not even worth slicing off, although Vin had thought about exactly what twist of the wrist would be required to separate it from his balls – and figured that, out of the two of them, he was the one who’d kept his dignity. Even when it was happening, once he’d realized there was nothing he could do about it, he’d sucked it up and kept his mouth shut, and never once begged, even biting down on his own wrist so he wouldn’t cry out. He reckoned Tanners, whatever else circumstances might make of them, weren’t the type to cry out.

There have been a few other mistakes as well, but Vin guesses that’s just part of life. Like he’s told JD enough times, show him a man who’s never made any mistakes, and he’ll show you a man who doesn’t know squat about life, because the learning process is based on all the things you shouldn’t have done, and sometimes the lessons you learn the hard way are the ones that bed in deepest. That’s why he don’t take baths with the others when they’re sluicing off the dirt after a long ride, because he’s had one bad experience in a bathhouse that he’s damned well never going to let get repeated. The others think he’s ashamed of how skinny he is, and Buck tries to be tactful in his own way, not drawing attention to Vin’s stray cat build but explaining it away with what he thinks is a joke: “Oh, leave him be, boys, it’s just his vanity anyhow. Thinks he’s so gorgeous that if we once see him naked we’re not going to be able to keep our hands to ourselves.”

And, ironically, that’s pretty much the way of it; although Vin just gives Buck a grin when he says that and tells him he’s right on the money, then goes and washes in the creek, warily, and without getting more than grabbing distance from his gun. Buck’s a good man in every kind of way, but sometimes he uses words that don’t have any reality for him. Only this morning Buck was reminiscing about that dry town they fetched up in on the trail of a murderer, and how a desert ride with no whiskey at the end of it was like ‘a long, hard ass fucking without even a reach around’, but Vin could tell by the way Buck threw the words out there that he weren’t talking from experience. A reach around is minimum courtesy, it’s true, and most of the men, in recent years, have been civilized enough to oblige during or after the time they’re humping him up against a wall, but he’s had fucks go sour in the past where not getting off was the least of his problems, and even getting beat half to death wasn’t always the worst of it. But he don’t think Buck knows about things like that, the difference between Buck’s build and his, being that Buck don’t need to wrap his skinny body in six layers of clothing to keep off unwanted attentions, and probably never has.

“Where did you go…?” Chris breathes softly in his ear, nuzzling at him like a deer with a new fawn, and Vin realizes that he’s been thinking so much about the past that he’s somehow lost the present.

Vin looks up into Chris’s green eyes and feels something in him going weak and defenseless as a woman. He tries to hang onto this brittle humor they share, stopping this night turning what they have into something else – because he’s scared to death of losing what they have, not even realizing until this minute how much this damned friendship of theirs has become the bedrock of his life. “Ain’t you done yet?” he enquires, deadpan. “I reckon I nodded off with all that foreplay.”

“You are just a valentine heart wrapped around a box of chocolates, aren’t you?” Chris murmurs, grinning, but still nuzzling him all the same. Typical Larabee to decide that Vin being ornery is just the most enchanting thing ever.

Vin grins back before he can help himself, unable not to respond to that devilish flash of teeth, that glint in Chris’s eye. “That’s me all right.”

Chris bends his head and goes back to those damned kisses, little licks and nips along Vin’s shoulder and into the curve of his collar bone that make him tremble all over with wanting, while Chris’s other hand is doing even more wicked work between his legs, stroking him just right. 

Vin shivers, trying not to moan, because, damn, Chris knows just too well how to get him hard, those fingers pulling on him rough and gentle at the same time, the perfect amount of friction, and all that warm breath against the nerve of his neck, and then teeth grating on his shoulder… He moans and feels Chris grin again, nibbling at his earlobe now, while his fingers keep stroking Vin’s cock with those firm, sure strokes. Vin gasps, “You keep that up and I’ll be getting the payment before you’ve had the goods….”

Chris stops what he’s doing, just for a second, and Vin wonders what it is he’s said to make the man intake his breath like that and then, just as he’s getting uneasy, Chris runs his fingers through his hair, turns his head round, making Vin twist underneath on the bed, so Chris is half on top of him and Vin half turned to look at him, then Chris gazes into his eyes for a wordless moment, and then kisses him on the mouth. And no one has ever kissed him like that before – with all that urgency or that hunger or that concentrated focus – like there is nothing else in the world in that instant for Chris except Vin Tanner. The sheer force of Chris’s need for him barrels Vin over onto his back, and he finds himself bouncing on the bedsprings of Chris’s creaking old bed with Chris’s lean strength pinning him down as the man kisses him breathless, fingers in his hair, tongue in his mouth, Chris’s cock grazing his in agonizing spasms of pleasure. There’s not just hunger in those kisses – although there is plenty of that, there’s need, too, and a kind of solemnity to it, like they’re exchanging not just spit but promises.

Still hungrily, like Vin is a meal he has been waiting to eat all his life, Chris kisses down his neck, to his chest, licks at Vin’s nipples – no one has ever done that before and it’s a shock the way they harden like a girl’s as Chris’s warm tongue laps over them – then nips and kisses a line down his body, making Vin jolt and squirm and whimper. He thinks about gasping out that all he signed on for was a fuck and this is getting so far beyond a fuck that he don’t even have a name for it, but Chris is in the kind of mood where there’s no point talking to him because he ain’t going to be diverted. His mouth is moving lower and lower and Vin is gasping and squirming like a hooked trout because everywhere Chris’s mouth touches it sets up a tingling fire across his skin, and then Chris is licking his thighs and finally his balls and Vin nearly jumps straight off the bed with the shock of it.

“What the hell are you doin’?” he gasps out.

Chris glances up at him and licks his lips deliberately, like he’s throwing down a challenge. “You remember when Silas Cook called me an evil cocksucker?”

Vin remembers it well and all the lead that got thrown around that day. “Sure.”

Another slow lick of the lips and the look in Chris’s eye is nothing _but_ evil. “Turns out he was right.” And then Chris’s mouth is on his cock and Vin is arching as that wet warmth engulfs him all the way to the root. He makes a sound that is a little too close to a shriek to be entirely dignified, and then starts cursing Chris out with every bad word he knows while Chris just grins and sucks. And Vin ain’t never felt anything like it, and he can’t help his back arching and his hips jolting helplessly as Chris plays him like a cello that’s just been restrung. The sensations are all hitting him too hard and too intensely, and he wonders if this is what dying is like – all those body parts that he never even knew he had until now clamoring for attention – he’d always reckoned a man would have to be peppered with hot lead to have this much fire in his veins. There’s a heat at the base of his spine he swears he’s never felt before in his life, and even his damned thighs are tingling all over. Chris takes him in even deeper and he arches again, thinking he is going to die right here, right now, because this is more pleasure than the human body is meant to take. 

That’s when Chris slips a slicked finger up his ass and finds his sweet spot and Vin sings out in an octave men just aren’t meant to reach. Chris just keeps grinning around his cock, and sucking him so hard and so well that it’s a miracle the damned thing is still attached, and the pleasure is so far beyond too much to bear that Vin thinks he probably ain’t even still whole, he’s just a cloud of orgasmic dust. And somehow Chris is making him come and stopping him coming at the same time, with his mouth sucking and his fingers pinching, and Vin is hovering here, trapped in that agonizing ecstatic peak, having what damned well feels like an out of body experience. Then Chris slides two fingers into him good and hard and that’s it – the jolt of pleasure that’s too intense to bear – and Vin is coming like he’s never come before, like the whole damned ocean just rolled over him and sucked him off on the way.

Someone is making whimpering noises like a beaten dog, murmuring things that sound half like a prayer and half like a curse and saying ‘Fuck’ and then whimpering some more, and it takes Vin at least a minute to realize that it’s him. He opens his eyes and finds the room is still going around in circles but he’s lying on his back on Chris’s bed and Chris is gazing down at him with the smuggest damned smile on his face. He licks his lips deliberately again, letting Vin know what it is he’s tasting and Vin says breathlessly: “There ain’t no decent way you came by that particular skill….”

“I never said I was decent.” Chris kisses him and Vin finds his mouth opening traitorously and his eyes closing, and his whole body yearning towards Chris like a divining rod to water. Somehow his hands are in Chris’s hair and he’s running his fingers through those crisp blond locks and his tongue is in Chris’s mouth, tasting his own salt flavor, and his legs are wrapping themselves around Chris’s waist and he’s _still_ damned whimpering. He finds himself biting Chris’s neck and sucking on his shoulder and Chris sticks his tongue in his ear – just because, Vin swears, he likes forcing Vin to make all those alto sounds.

“You found me out,” Chris admits. “The truth is, I have a thing for choir boys. Round here, you’re the nearest local equivalent.”

“That would be JD, and you ain’t never looked at him twice. Not in that way.” Vin focuses on Chris’s unnecessarily handsome face, frowning a little. “Why is that anyway?”

“Maybe because I saw you first and then I stopped looking.”

They gaze into each other’s eyes for an endless moment, Chris letting him see that he’s speaking the truth and Vin knowing it is. Then Chris manages a shrug, breaking the moment before it gets too intense to bear – though his hands keep moving up and down Vin’s back the whole time, like he can’t get enough of touching him – “And, the truth is, I like my choir boys kind of raggedy and a little bit chewed around the edges. If they’re not stringy as a week old stew they just don’t do it for me.”

Vin raises an eyebrow. “Lucky I happened by then.”

“Lucky you did.”

“Especially as I like my cowboys on the ornery and morose side, with plenty of brooding and not much conversation. Not to mention a habit of tying one on every few months and getting drunker than a skunk and meaner than a rattlesnake.”

Chris inclines his head at the accuracy of the description. “Reckon we’re made for each other.”

Vin finds himself gazing at Chris as if the man knows all the answers to all the world’s questions. “Reckon we are.”

Chris is managing to advance them up the bed with brute determination and wiry strength and Vin finds himself on his back again, with Chris’s surely aching cock brushing against his sated one as Chris moves in for another nerve-shattering kiss. The look in Chris’s eyes is like nothing Vin has ever seen before, holding his gaze as Chris strokes Vin’s mussed hair back from his face before he kisses him gently as a raindrop on a new leaf. “You want to go to sleep?” he asks softly.

Vin looks down the bed at Chris’s unsated erection. “I’m still waiting for that fuck I was promised.”

Chris blinks in surprise. “I can see to this myself.”

“Seems kind of stupid when I’m right here though, don’t it?” Vin rolls his eyes. “Or you thinking about an assignation with Josiah after all?” He makes to turn over and Chris grabs his shoulder, easing him back down again.

“If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather be able to kiss you without having to twist my damned head off.”

It’s Vin’s turn to blink in surprise because he’s never done it face to face with a man. Chris manages to blur all thoughts by moving in for another kiss, sweet and tender, their stubble rasping pleasurably as their tongues collide. It’s a shock to realize that Chris has been Chris the whole night through, he hasn’t turned into one of those cowboys that have fucked him up against a wall in the past, and he hasn’t once looked like this is just an itch that needs scratching and he’s going to be ashamed he did it in the morning. He’s been comfortable and confident and utterly Chris. He can still taste himself in Chris’s mouth and gives a little gasp as Chris’s fingers start doing their magic tricks again, slipping inside him, slick and warm and skilful. Chris gazes into his eyes intently. “We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”

“I do want to.”

“What I mean to say is that you don’t…owe me anything. I’m not trading saddle blankets with you here. This isn’t a business deal. I could suck you off every day for a year and you still wouldn’t owe me a damned thing.”

Vin wants to say something flip but makes the mistake of looking into Chris’s eyes even as Chris’s fingers are slipping in and out of him, slicking him up so carefully – more carefully than anyone he’s ever been with before. Cowboys in a hurry tend to make do with spit, but he already knows that if he suggested that to Chris, the man would get that look in his eyes again, like Vin had just grazed him with the edge of a knife, so he holds his tongue. This is the only person in the world who’s ever looked at him like this, like everything about him matters right down to his toenail parings, like he’s known and wanted and needed to the very bone. He has to swallow before he can find his voice because it seems to be lost somewhere in the look in Chris’s green eyes.

“Truth is you got me curious, cause after that last little show you put on – now I’m thinking maybe fucking with you ain’t exactly going to be like it was with them other fellers.”

“No.” Chris keeps looking right at him, while he slips two fingers inside him and stretches him gently. “It isn’t. Because if they’d felt about you the way I do – you’d still be there with them.”

Vin thinks about the nameless and the faceless men of his past and tries to make Chris even remotely like them, and it’s like comparing prairie dogs with a timber wolf, there ain’t no comparison. He reaches up to grab him, filled with a sudden fierce longing for him, for this friend he knows so well and who knows him so well and who he’d trust with his life in any situation, clothed or unclothed, wanting to touch every inch of him and pulling Chris down for a deeper kiss. “Do it, Larabee,” he breathes. “Do it now.” And Chris slides into him, like a knife into butter, sweet and painless and so damned pleasurable that the sweat breaks out all over his skin – Chris craning his neck to lick off the droplets. The first thrust is the slowest Vin’s ever felt in his life, not like Chris thinks he’s made of china, more like he wants them both to savor every second. Then Chris rides over his sweet spot and Vin gasps at the unexpected pleasure, arching his back into Chris’ steady rhythm, putting his head back, while Chris kisses a path down his throat. When the bed begins to creak in time to Chris’s thrusts, Vin tries to hear a music he recognizes, but even this is different from doing it with women, even the bedsprings are playing a different tune and he knows his body has never felt like this, limp and relaxed and wanting it without a wince.

“Maybe you are the first, after all…” he murmurs.

Chris smiles down at him, arms braced to hold himself off Vin’s body, but still kissing him every chance he gets. “What’s that…?”

“Nothing,” Vin tells him, grinning up at him in the relief of them still being who they were before, the friendship still a thread between them he can feel, nothing made worse and everything made better, like a big shining sun just came into his life that weren’t there before. “I didn’t say a word….”

##### The End


End file.
